Extremism and 'Prevent': the need to trust in education

‘Prevent’ is
the part of the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy designed to respond
to the ideological challenges of terrorism and extremism. Are its priorities self-defeating? There are promising alternatives.

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Nottingham University model United Nations. Martin Sylvester/Flickr. Some rights reserved.In
responding to the recent Select Committee Report into the terrorist murder of
soldier Lee Rigby, Home Secretary Theresa May has offered a significant
strengthening of anti-terrorism measures. These include greater responsibility
for all public organisations to contribute to terrorism-prevention. They also
confirmed a greater focus, post the Trojan Horse affair, on
schools, colleges and other educational institutions: the teaching of British
values are now compulsory for all state-supported schools in England, and
OSFTED are actively investigating their implementation during their inspections
of both schools and colleges. Universities have also been obliged to re-double
their efforts to ban ‘extremism’ on campuses.

Responding to terrorism

However, amidst
this flurry of activity there are few signs of any actual anti-extremist
education taking place. Our concern is that the Prevent focus on identifying young people viewed as vulnerable to
radicalisation is taking attention away from the need to promote the prevention
of extremism through educational approaches that build individual and collective
youth resilience that not only just teach the principles
of democratic citizenship but actually put it into practice.

We feel that
initiatives such as the Welsh-based Think
Project show how to do this through open and robust educational
conversations. However, currently such open and upfront political education
work is not being prioritised by Prevent
- educational practitioners are not being trained and supported to undertake
such work – and the wider context of citizenship education is being downplayed
in England under the Coalition.

Leading
academic analysts of terrorism such as Richard English have long-argued that
how democratic states respond to terrorist threats is crucial – a response of
repression or unjustified surveillance can represent precisely the undermining
of democratic rights and processes that extremist groups hope to achieve. In
that context, we argue that Prevent’s failure to trust in, and promote processes
of, genuine education built around principles of democratic and equal
citizenship represents a failure of our national democratic traditions and our
nerve as a society in the face of an undoubted terrorist threat.

Prevent and young people

From its inception,
the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy has been controversial for two
reasons. Firstly, the focus on Muslims only (something that seems not to have
changed despite the claims of the 2011 Prevent
review) contradicted the policy approach of community cohesion, which was
emphasising commonality and more complex identities, and has led to predictable
Muslim perceptions of stigmatisation. Secondly, Prevent’s preventative approach of engagement has increasingly led
to a reality of Police/Counter-Terrorism Unit dominance in a community-based
programme, with the inevitable charge of creating a ‘suspect community’.

Prevent has very significantly focused on
young people, engaging with very large numbers of young Muslims in Labour’s
‘Prevent 1’ phase and a continuing concern with young people and educational
institutions in the Coalition’s smaller ‘Prevent 2’. The prioritisation of Prevent measures through OFSTED
inspections in the wake of the Trojan Horse Birmingham Schools affair (which
was actually about religious conservatism, NOT terrorism) has simply deepened
the securitised nature of Prevent as Police officers visit more schools to warn
‘vulnerable’ young Muslims.

As we have argued previously, there has
been precious little evidence here of actual education input for these young
people – Prevent has not focused on,
or encouraged, open political debate and education about the sort of domestic
and international political issues that may anger some young Muslims and
attract them towards more radical groups. The 2008 School Prevent Toolkit was side-lined in favour of schools focusing on core
curriculum subjects, whilst the UK Youth Parliament’s offer to lead a national political
education training programme for youth workers was rejected.

Under the
Coalition, the Prevent approach to
young people has increasingly been one of ‘child protection’ – these are ‘vulnerable’
young people who must be ‘safeguarded’ from terrorism’s ideological virus; but
there is little by way or real education to help build the political resilience
against such extremist narratives (whether Islamist or far-right racist).

In the
latest Prevent measures, the further
pressure to ban extremist speakers in universities and colleges will remove
almost all opportunity for young people to hear extremist views and to
have them challenged in an open and reasoned way, as though they are so seductive
that any attempt to oppose them will result in failure. More generally, the
Government seems very reluctant to allow a more open debate about a wider range
of contentious issues in which young people can begin to acquire a political
and religious literacy.

Educating against extremism

What we
urgently need to see Prevent
encourage and support is the approach advocated by Lynn Davies, which she terms
‘educating
against extremism’ in both schools and communities. Here, the success of
the Think Project, a Swansea-based
anti-extremism education initiative created by a local BME organisation has
much to offer and that is why we support the replication of their approach in
other parts of the UK.

The Think Project targets local white young
people seen as vulnerable to far-right racist ideologies and organisations. But
it has learnt the lessons of previous
anti-racist educational work. Think
does not see racist language or behaviour by young people as evidence of
inherent, essential racism that must be condemned. Instead it sees young
people’s radical/racist views as fluid and potentially changeable.

Their
educational approach is one of open dialogue, with prejudiced views challenged
but in a patient and respectful way that encourages young people to re-think
assumptions through exposure to different perspectives. This includes dialogue
with local asylum seekers about their actual experiences and the input of a
confident, trained and ethnically-mixed staff team who demonstrate ‘cohesion’
in action. Above all, the Think
Project trusts the power of education and shows a faith in the potential of all
young people to develop resilience against extremism and hatred by enabling
them to learn and to practice real, democratic debate and citizenship.

Three
fundamental learning points for Prevent emerge from the Think Project experience:

- Firstly,
the need for training that gives educational practitioners the right skills and
approaches to confidently engage young people in processes of debate and
reflection.

- Secondly,
the need for educational leaders and, more importantly, politicians to trust
teachers and youth workers to engage in such political education debates with
young people – such processes inevitably lead to the airing of strong language
and strong views but these are much better aired within facilitated educational
processes that are set against multiple perspectives, than in private spaces
where no challenge or learning is encouraged.

- Thirdly,
such anti-extremist educational processes need a sound philosophical base.
‘British values’ is a highly controversial concept, whereas processes of
citizenship education based around concepts of human rights enable young people
of all backgrounds to appreciate that they have rights but also have
responsibilities.

An
investment in and encouragement of such anti-extremist educational processes by
Prevent would show that the UK believes in and trusts its own democratic system
and that it upholds a real sense of equal citizenship in the face of a
terrorist threat. Prioritising surveillance and fear over education is both
stigmatising and self-defeating.

We also recognise
that ‘education’ does not just take place in the classroom. Indeed, it is
important that societal processes support and underpin formal education and
learning. A new pan-European study led by Miles
Hewstone of Oxford University has shown that everyday learning through positive intergroup
contact, develops both directly and indirectly to improve the understanding and
acceptance of diversity.

While also
including the tackling of disadvantage, we conclude from this that we need to
re-invigorate those wider schemes that were begun under the community cohesion
agenda, schemes that have been increasingly reduced and marginalised. We need
to provide a counter-balance to the negative narrative which is succeeding
across Europe where popular extremist and nationalist parties are growing. This
is often reflected in the press and media too.

Young people
are emerging into an increasingly globalised world, but have few opportunities
to acquire intercultural competences in which they are able to negotiate
national, faith and cultural boundaries, with tolerance and respect, rather
than retreat in fear.

This is a
challenge for all young people and is not confined to Muslims, migrants and
other minorities; a sense of belonging needs to be shared by the entire
population. As populations grow and become ever more globalised, governments
need to take responsibility for a more positive vision of diversity, and to
promote the development of shared spaces in which such debate can take place
and be facilitated.

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